June 3

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative. ~ W. Clement Stone

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity... In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt. ~ Lawrence Lessig (born 3 June 1961)

It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. ~ Lawrence Lessig

It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history — free culture.
If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.

So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without them. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically. Blindness becomes our common sense. And the challenge for anyone who would reclaim the right to cultivate our culture is to find a way to make this common sense open its eyes.
So far, common sense sleeps. There is no revolt. Common sense does not yet see what there could be to revolt about.

There's nothing much I can tell you about this war. It's like all wars, I suppose. The undertakers are winning it. Oh, the politicians will talk a lot about the "glory" of it, and the old men'll talk about the "need" of it — the soldiers, they just want to go home.

The object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions. ~ Sydney Smith (born June 3)

The law should regulate in certain areas of culture — but it should regulate culture only where that regulation does good. Yet lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?"
We should ask, "Why?" Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away. ~ Lawrence Lessig

There has never been a time in history when more of our "culture" was as "owned" as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now. ~ Lawrence Lessig

If you can't fight for your freedom . . . you don't deserve it … This is not a left and right issue. This is the important thing to recognize: This is not about conservatives versus liberals. … This is not about left and right. This is about right and wrong. That's what this battle is. ~ Lawrence Lessig

We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator. Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
Ours is less and less a free society. ~ Lawrence Lessig

My corn I take serious because it's my corn, and my potatoes and my tomatoes and fences I take note of because they're mine. But this war is not mine and I take no note of it! ~ Charlie Anderson in Shenandoah

I've got five hundred acres of good, rich dirt, here, and as long as the rains come and the sun shines, it'll grow anything I have a mind to plant. And we pulled every stump, and we cleared every field, and we done it ourselves without the sweat of one slave. ~ Charlie Anderson in Shenandoah

That might me so, Johnson, but these are my sons! They don't belong to the state. When they were babies, I never saw the state coming around with a spare tit! We never asked anything of the state, and never expected anything. We do our own living and thanks to no man for the right. ~ Charlie Anderson in Shenandoah

I'm not going to kill you. I want you to live. I want you to live to be an old man, and I want you to have many, many, many children, and I want you to feel about your children then the way I feel about mine now. And someday, when a man comes along and kills one of 'em, I want you to remember! Okay? I want you to remember. ~ Charlie Anderson in Shenandoah